More than £36 million was spent on management consultants by the Ministry of Justice in the last three years.

The top spend includes almost £6 million on the HM Courts and Tribunal Service’s reform programme and more than £16 million in relation to the MoJ headquarters.

The department paid £10.4m to consultants in 2021/22 having spent £12m the previous year and £13.7m in 2019/20.

But the outlay is much less than in previous years, as the MoJ spent £35.6 million on consultants in 2018 alone.

The MoJ also paid £4.3m to external consultants for ‘digitech’ initiatives in the last two years.

Commercial and contract management at the department led to a total consultancy spend of £5.6m in the past three years, though just £436,000 of that came in the last year.

Answering a question from deputy Labour leader Angela Raynor, justice minister James Cartlidge said: “To ensure value for money is secured from the engagement of management consultants, the ministry’s commercial policy is to put new requirements out to competition.”